TheHatchetBlog: Skype Scrim Chat

In this blog tonight I'm just going to be talking about the communities favourite communication tool and how it is hindering EUeSports growth.

Now of course there are countless pros with skype which on the whole outweigh the cons but I personally believe that we do rely on it too much and that it is stalling our development, especially for new members. The problem which I'm talking about is how as a community the vast majority of us all use skype to organise our scrims which makes it very difficult for new members to get involved in the action.
I'm not too sure how exactly to word this or explain what I'm trying to get out so I'm going to make a bullet pointed list about some of the problems:

• Firstly we're a PS3 website and you should only really require a PS3 to get involved. WIth skype playing such a prominent role it makes it very difficult for players with no access to Skype/PS3 at the same time. Therefore straight away crossing out some potential players.
• The next problem is that new members who sign up are being told to join a skype chat if they wish to get involved. There are two problems with that:

1. Firstly from my experiences it is usually filled with kids having pety arguments which sets off a bad example for the community.
2. Secondly if you have just signed up to the website then it's a pretty big chore to have to then download software and add people on skype. Especially seeing as even doing that still doesn't seem to get some members in scrims.

• We then have other new members who just sign up solely for scrims and don't post intros/recruitment threads so they know no better. If anybody looked at the activity of the scrim thread/chatbox or tried using it, I doubt they'd have the most success and this again puts of potential new players.
• Skype can seem very personal and intimidating for somebody new to the forums, not everybody is outgoing and chatty. So being thrown into a busy skype chat isn't going to work for everybody especially foreign players who struggle with the language barrier.

The way I see it is that we're just stunting our own growth and making it even more difficult for new members to get involved. Now I could go on a rant about free agents who sign up to EUeSports alone as well but I'll leave that for another time, all I'm trying to say is that it isn't simple to progress in the community. We're all very quick to criticise the players and talk about success stories but when you consider that we've had 5,000 people sign up, I'm sure we would be able to find a lot of players who had good intentions but struggled to get anywhere because the community is so closed off.

Understandably one of the key reasons why teams use skype is to play with teams and players they're familiar with and know will test them. On the other end of the scale though this just leaves the teams at the bottom end in this viscous cycle of playing ODCs and scrims against eachother not really getting involved. I'm not saying that we should rule skype out as a way of getting scrims but more so that we need to get rid of scrim chats and make the threads/chatbox the first port of call for scrimming. Skype may certainly seem the more preferential option to the majority of you but you need to think about the long term and I firmly believe it's doing us no favours.
Like I listed the cons of skype, I'll now list some of the pros from moving to use EUeSports for scrims:

• New members who sign up will see how active scrim threads are and be able to get involved straight away.
• Seeing top teams posting looking for scrims will have a knock on effect and the rest will follow suit as the top players generally set the trend and lead by example.
• If everybody is using the chats/threads then there'll be alot more potential scrims to get involved in and you'll be just as likely to scrim a team of your ability as you would be on skype if everyone was using it.
• On occasions some of the newer teams will get the chance to play against top players which will mean the world to them and will hopefully make them learn quicker from losing to the best.
• There won't be so many 'cliques' and as a community we would appear alot more open, right now with all the skype chats it means members are shutting themselves off to the rest of the community.
• In the long run of things hopefully we'll see more players and teams getting involved on EUeS and looking to attend LANs etc.. By making it that little bit easier and occasionally playing the new team, I'm sure alot more members will stick around.

Right now it seems like we have two groups of players, those who attend LAN events or have been on EUeS for a while and post on forums, and then those who aren't avid forum users but just want to play cod and therefore stick to ODCs as it's the most hassle free way of getting a few games.
If we all work together then hopefully this gap can be bridged and we'll have one big community rather than two small ones within EUeSports. We need to be branching out and working together to make EUeSports bigger and in the long run it will hopefully result in more teams, more competition, bigger lans, bigger prizefunds and finally more well known organisations moving into PS3.

Everybody is quick to pass the blame here and nobody takes responsibility. Yes we have had a few success stories from players that signed up on MW3 but for every player which made it to LAN I'd say there are another 20 who signed up and have made it no further than playing the odd ODC.

So finally I'm finishing this thread and encourage you all to do one thing:
PLEASE LEAVE ANY SCRIM CHATS TODAY AND USE THE FORUMS TO FIND SCRIMS


We need everybody to act on this. Those who run the chats kick people, those who are in them to leave. If you get invited to a scrim chat then leave it. The only way to do this is to work from the top down so I'm begging all the top players to leave any scrim chats ASAP and the rest should follow suit.

I know the teams going to LAN obviously want to play against top teams in the lead up and to practice for LAN which is fair enough. But please give the forums a chance for finding scrims and if it's not working pm members from the teams on skype individually.

Sorry about the way this is laid out/formatted as I know it can look a bit daunting to read but please do.

Also I'm sure some members may not agree with me so feel free to put up an argument against. I'm also open to any other suggestions in regards to making scrims easier to find and making the website more accessible for new members because at the end of the day if we don't have any new players coming in then or LAN attendances will continue to decrease.

All you have to do is look at the success of the decerto scrim thread and how much their community has grown. I even know some PS3 players used to favour playing on xbox in preparation for LAN because it was so much easier to get a scrim.

So if you've bothered to read this please comment and please do something about it. One man can't fix this problem we have so set an example and actually began to act because this is something that's been long overdue if this community wants to go in the right direction. Also if you have any other ideas or suggestions please throw them out there.

i did not read it all, but as i'm an absolute boss i've not been in the scrim chat for months. It's not as great a problem as has been made, it's been easy to get scrims without it, probably easier than it was. The chat's just filled with bs anyway, and a bunch of scrubs.

this is a good idea, alot of people will just ignore this, and most ppl use the eues chat or forums as a last resort, bit tbf when u get a scrim against forum teams, or teams that use the eues chat, there normally foreighn, dont know rules, or never have an actual team

Euesports Olympics

I totally agree with Hatchet and Ive left the chats. Hopefully more people will as he is right. If u look on decerto, everyone uses the scrim threads.

And also, people should care less about pickups playing together.. On decerto, most you find in the scrim threads is just friends playing together. And if there are more teams with just pickups it is easier to get scrims etc as the thread will be more active.

Cheers appreciate it!

I'm not asking everyone to play against randoms as I understand teams need to play strong teams to prepare for LAN events. All I'm saying is that we've got half the community using threads and half the community on skype and the community is pretty divided.

There's actually a scrim chat between decerto players on skype.

Yeah I used to be in it. Thing is most players still primarily use the threads and the players which were in the chat were all LAN goers. Over here we've just got a range of all players thrown into the one chat with very few using the forums.

You'll rarely find good teams looking in the DE scrim thread. When you play people from the scrim thread, there or here, 90% of the time they quit after 1/2 maps, that's why I avoid it.

Disagreed. Cba putting up points against.

All I will say is since the scrim chats stopped, I never managed to find a scrim.

Also, the worst desicion somebody ever did was 'Oh create a chat for the team leaders of LAN teams.'

When i said against it, people bashed me. Good luck though

This problem will never be solved because PS3's mic's are shit.
If you get in a PS3 lobby you won't be able to talk to the opponent because they are all using skype.
On xbox you just join their party chat or with 1 press on a button you go to in game chat.
If PS3 would have party chat this problem woudn't be so big.

I don't mind players using skype it's more that everybody organises scrims through skype while others use forums and it's just a hassle. We need everyone using the one method as the scrim chats are run by kids on EUeS who just kick people they don't like and constantly get involved in pety arguments. It's enough to put anyone off our community

I don't really see whats wrong with the thread atm, when we were active we began to use it and got games quite easily, though it was 90% the French community. People are missing out by using that skype chat, its a fucking mission trying to get a scrim on there whilst scrolling through the shite written by people like Lesty.

Agree, even when we created a scrim chat which was closely monitored, after like a week or two it was exactly like all previous chats.

I agree, people should use the forums more often, it will show new players how active and easy it is to get a game. And if everybody thinks that the forums are just full of foreign teams then everybody from the chats should use the threads then it wont be. And plus, if you do play against foreign teams, you should let them host because the better you are off host, more than likely you will be better at LAN as your used to having a disadvantage, then when its level you'll be slappin cunts about :) MAKE SKYPE THE LAST RESORT, NOT THE FORUMS :D